Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where none of us is as smart as all of us. Look, with everything going on in the world and the economy, we all need something to smile about. Now, as you know, I personally love sci-fi, and I recently stumbled upon a subgenre called Solar Punk, and it's been making me smile as I've been learning more about it, so I hope you want to learn more about it too. Here to make us smart about this is Phoebe Wagner. She's a writer, academic, and editor of three Solar Punk anthologies, including Sun Vault, Stories of Solar Punk and Eco-Speculation. Dr. Wagner, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, Kimberly. I'm excited to be here. So let's start with the basics. What is Solar Punk? Like, how do you usually describe it to people? The way that I approach it is that Solar Punk is sort of this genre that spans literature and media, video games, and that it imagines new futures in the midst of an opposition to environmental collapse, and importantly, then works to create those futures. And Solar Punk's stories also recognize that the climate crisis and environmental collapse are all entangled, and that we can't have environmental justice without social justice, which is what starts to separate it from environmental literature or climate fiction. And then importantly, there's this technological aspect of Solar Punk I think a lot of people really enjoy, and it's fun to play around with. And this idea that humanity needs to find sort of a balance with technology, but it's really about the right technological tool and the right moment. Why do we need a label like Solar Punk? I think it's helpful to sort of place it within the punk genre. So when we think about cyberpunk, which is this more dystopian sort of concern about technology, and then we got to steampunk, which was thinking about the Industrial Revolution, and then we get to Solar Punk, which is thinking about environment, technology, and also social justice. And so even though subgenres sometimes become unnecessary to have so many different names, I think this was an important because of the punk aspect. There is a punk part of Solar Punk that separates it from climate fiction, which doesn't necessarily have to have some of those more punk, like DIY community focused aspects. So give us the history. Where did the Solar Punk genre come from? Like when did it get going? So it's relatively recent. So in 2008 is when the word first appeared, and then it became popular on Tumblr and other social media websites from like, you know, 2014, 2015. And then we get the first anthology in 2012, which actually came out of Brazil and has written in Portuguese and has since been translated and it's just called Solar Punk. And then my anthology Sunfall shows up on the scene in 2017, as sort of the first general English anthology to include art and poetry and short fiction. And what drew you to Solar Punk in the first place? So right around the 2010s, we were seeing a lot of dystopian storytelling. You know, we had Hunger Games, we had Mad Max, Fury Road, which I love. I think that's a great movie. But as a first year graduate student in an environmental creative writing program, I was growing concerned that if we were primarily imagining these negative dystopian futures, that then what were we going to be inspired to build towards? That we had to be imagining something positive alongside these also important dystopian works. And so that's when I found Solar Punk online. And I felt like it was a great intervention into this sort of dystopian mindset. You know, it's so funny. Well, I guess it's not funny. It's kind of sad that you hear so many people today talking about how we're living the dystopian sci-fi predictions of the past. And what kind of captured my imagination when I stumbled upon Solar Punk was this idea that if we can imagine these kind of awful technology fueled futures that then become reality, what happens if we imagine better technology fueled futures? Exactly, right? I mean, I think we're seeing that play out so much with how with AI, right? And how some of it is being compared to like iRobot, which is a sort of bizarre comparison in my mind because of the dystopian nature of that film. And so, yeah, I think we've definitely seen science fiction impact our thinking around technology and sometimes in negative ways. We also have the positive example of Star Trek, right? I always like to point that out and the communicator being the inspiration for the cell phone. But certainly it's had an impact, which is what I think is the power of Solar Punk and this type of storytelling. We know there can be that impact. All right, we are going to take a quick break, but we will be right back. If you're a business leader, Intuit QuickBooks Payroll is an essential tool that completely integrates payroll, time tracking, HR, and your financials in a powerful all-in-one command center. No more juggling platforms or switching between vendors. All your data synced into one platform offering clarity and confidence to make smarter decisions and focus on what matters. This summer, QuickBooks Payroll evolves to support the entire team lifecycle, HR, time, benefits, and payroll, all working together in one connected system that fully integrates with your books. 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So it feels like something that an average community member can have and can imagine how it could impact their community rather than it being something that feels sort of out of reach. I know certainly right now in my life, it doesn't feel like I have the ability to get solar panels for my house, things like that. But SolarPunk has this sort of DIY aspect to it where we think about, okay, how do we do this? We're going to do this in a way that's not really a big deal. SolarPunk has this sort of DIY aspect to it where we think about, okay, how can we take this technology and give it to the people? And so it helps folks imagine what does it look like to be living with sustainable technology? How might that be implemented into my community, into my everyday life, into a disaster scenario, a climate disaster scenario? What does that actually look like? How do SolarPunk stories deal with economic issues? So SolarPunk at its heart as part of that sort of punk ethos is anti-capitalist, right? So you'll oftentimes see depictions that are sort of pushing back against our current economic system, whether that's communities that are on bartering systems, communities that run entirely on mutual aid, or sometimes friction between communities, right? This isn't meant to be a utopian style of storytelling. There are still problems here. So how do two characters or two communities that have different economic systems come together and solve problems? Once I started seeing this description of SolarPunk, I realized that it shows up quite a bit in anime, which anybody who listens to this show knows I watch a lot of anime. I mean, where are we seeing SolarPunk influences in media and art and other aspects that people might recognize? Oh yeah, I was just talking with my students about SolarPunk and they were asking me about different anime. So yeah, we've certainly seen this already come up. Studio Ghibli, I think, has a great example of some of Miyazaki's work as sort of proto-SolarPunk things that people are feeling inspired by. And then, yeah, certainly it's coming up in other animes as well, in other animation generally. There's a Chobani yogurt ad that is available on YouTube called Dear Alice. That is, I think, a great example of SolarPunk short of the fact that it's a Chobani yogurt ad, which I think is fascinating. But in terms of other places we're seeing it show up, you know, I see it a lot on social media, I see it on TikTok. There's some really great video essays on YouTube that are coming out. I particularly like Andrewism's video essays on SolarPunk. So we're really seeing it spread to different mediums, not just sort of short story anthologies where it initially started after it being popular on social media. And people are also talking about it as like an aesthetic as well. Yeah, absolutely. The Art Nouveau sort of design of SolarPunk has clearly captured, you'll see it show up in advertising and marketing and also in just the ways that people want to present their work. So there's a lot of bright colors that you'll see. It's a very sort of in comparison to the gritty sort of neon of cyberpunk. In SolarPunk you're going to see a lot of sunlight. You're going to see these bright colors. You're going to see sort of flowing clothes and these buildings that oftentimes are sort of worked into the landscape as opposed to being starkly sort of positioned against it. And then you're going to see a lot more green space. Now there is of course SolarPunk stories that take place in the desert and SolarPunk has a variety of different locations as it should. It's a very global genre. But oftentimes in the pictures you see in the art, you see a lot of this focus on green space, people and nonhumans interacting together in these green spaces and a lot of that bright colors that make it desirable. Why do you think people are turning to SolarPunk now? So one of the important things that SolarPunk does is it acknowledges that we are living and are going to be living through difficult times in terms of the climate as well as social injustice. So my PhD is in American literature and I focused on environmental literature. And one of the things we see in earlier environmental literature is this focus on warning. There's this idea that if we can just warn people and sort of focus on if we don't change our ways, X bad thing will happen. That's a lot of what an early environmental literature is. And so SolarPunk is in sort of the opposite of that. Instead it's saying, hey, we're living in this moment of disaster or climate issue or war and we're building something better out of it. We're surviving and even more than surviving, we're thriving. And I think as we're seeing more climate impacts in the US, as we're seeing issues around the world, that sense of even though there is a disaster or apocalypse or problem happening, we're building something better is so needed and important right now. Yeah. And I think about sort of Cyberpunk and some of these other dystopian ideas. Often the solution proposed is either escape or destruction, right? Like the whole system needs to burn down and start from scratch or you need to escape to some far off planet where things are going to be better. And this is very different. Yeah, absolutely, right? It's especially I think your point about escaping to this far off planet. Like SolarPunk takes place on Earth for that very reason, right? We need to be thinking about how do we care for the people and places and members of our community, both human and non-human, that we're living with now and into the future. How do we create something for seven generations from now rather than this idea of escape? Are there examples of sort of the SolarPunk ethos aesthetic idea that are playing out in real life right now, not just in fiction? Yeah, I think that's one of the exciting things is that we're seeing it sort of start to come off the page. I mean, I think almost any time you're seeing examples of mutual aid, you could claim that as SolarPunk, right? People coming together to support their communities. Mutual aid has always been a part of SolarPunk. And so we're seeing that obviously here in the US in the forms of protests, people coming together in Minneapolis, spaces like that. But also there's other real world examples. One of my favorite newsletters comes from hydroponic trash is the name of the account. And part of what this person is doing is learning, teaching themselves different technological skills, building hydroponic gardens, salvaging tech here in the US, and also building things for the community. So they built like a little trash pickup thing that I put in a park that community members were using to pick up trash in the park. And I think that's a great example of sort of someone who's been inspired by SolarPunk then taking it out into the real world. If folks are interested in checking out SolarPunk stories, like where should they begin? Any of the early anthologies, whether it's the Brazilian SolarPunk anthology, Sunvaal, or there's also the great duology, glass and gardens out of World Weaver Press, those are great places. But also there's Andruism on YouTube if you like video essays. I really like Rob Cameron's essays, which are available online. There's a great new journal called Tractor Beam, which defines itself as soil punk. But they have a lot of really cool stories that also fit into SolarPunk. And they do a great job of finding art and also scientists that annotate the stories. So it's a really cool publication. And many folks have probably heard of Becky Chambers' Psalm for the Wild Built, which is a SolarPunk novella. And if you haven't read it, if you love sci-fi, it's a really beautiful, sort of quiet book that I think is really inspiring. Phoebe Wagner, they are a writer, academic and editor of three SolarPunk anthologies, including the one called Sunvaal, Stories of SolarPunk and Eco-Speculation. Thank you so much for joining us, Phoebe. Thanks Kimberly, this was great. All right, I want to hear from you all. Are you a fan of SolarPunk? Is this your first time hearing about it? What are your recommendations if you've got any or if you go on a deep dive and find some new ones, let us know. You can email us at MakeMeSmart at marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-UBSmart. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Berksieger. Today's program was engineered by Montana Johnson with mixing by Charlton Thorpe. Ben Toladay and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our supervisory senior producer is Daisy Palacios. Nancy Fargali is executive producer of Marketplace Shows and Marketplace's vice president and general manager is Neal Sarpro. Hey, David Brancaccio here. I hope you're well and that your passport is up to date because I am hosting a trip to Italy this fall and you, you are invited. Stay at a world-class Tuscan villa and step into the world of the Medici, the formidable family whose influence and power help give rise to the Renaissance and the art we still celebrate today and not to mention the banking system. We're going to visit the world's oldest bank, swim in the thermal spa waters in Montecatini and take in the art of the Euphizzi. 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